


Conversations With The Starmen

by magic_and_hijinx



Category: Game Grumps, TWRP | Tupper Ware Remix Party (Band)
Genre: David Bowie - Freeform, Gen, I suppose, Starman - Freeform, dan needs to go the FUCK to bed, i've never actually played splatoon, peaceful alien visitation, songfic?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-18 19:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7326916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magic_and_hijinx/pseuds/magic_and_hijinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late one night, Danny gets a surprise introduction from some funk-loving, extra-terrestrial visitors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _There's a starman waiting in the sky_  
>  He's told us not to blow it  
> Cause he knows it's all worthwhile  
> He told me:  
> Let the children lose it  
> Let the children use it  
> Let all the children boogie  
> -David Bowie, Starman

The darkness was full of static that night, more like the drive to a concert than a leisurely midnight stroll. Butchered, bass-heavy remixes of popular songs replaced actual songs on the music channels at this time of night, but Danny hadn’t really been listening for a while anyways. He’d taken up residence on his worn-out grey leather sofa. Its arm made for quite a comfortable pillow after the kinks in his neck went numb and he’d gotten used to his legs almost spilling out over the other side of the sofa.  
His mind was elsewhere. His glazed-over, blurred vision split the white plastered ceiling in two. Random looping memories and partial ideas crowed the back of his head. Half-formed song lyrics and plans for tomorrow floated around in the extra empty space. There had to be _some_ way that 'penis' could rhyme with 'grievance'.  
The TV cut out. The silence set in like a jolt to Danny’s chest, forcing him out of his reverie. He jumped off the couch. His eyes darted from side-to-side as the little pangs of adrenaline began to fade. He reached a hand to the side of his neck and groaned as he got his comeuppance for lying in the same way for so long.  
He ambled over to the TV and knelt on the carpet. The power buttons on both the TV and the Sky Box were lit up with green lights. The plug was switched on at the wall, too. He rolled onto his bottom and leaned back. His eyebrows knitted together as his gaze lost focus around the frame of the curtainless window that covered the majority of the north-facing wall. He racked his brain for everything he knew about TVs- SCART plugs, HDMI cables and the like- but nothing offered up a solution.  
When his eyes re-focused, a beam of white light shot through the window. Splodges of blue, red and dirt brown covered his vision for a few moments. Even when his eyes adjusted, the world had a fuzzy blue tint to it. He reached up and used the windowsill ledge to hoist him up onto his feet. Light filled the window and forced his eyes shot. It was as if it were infiltrating his entire body, permeating his skin and filling him up with white. A half-numbed feeling of wrongness swirled around his stomach, partly _this is too much_ and partly _this could probably kill us_. His short breaths made his head fill up with hot air.  
After what could’ve been a second or an hour of staring at the back of his eyelids, painted in bright orange, the beam ceased. Little by little, his stomach muscles relaxed and the acid in his gut fizzled out. Bright orange turned into stains of blue and red, one pixel at a time. He opened his eyes.  
It hung a stretch above the roofs of houses. It kept itself up, ignoring the laws of gravity. It was pure white, like the light that had wrecked its way through Dan’s body a moment before. The number of compartments, subsections and annexes that branched off from the main body made it impossible to discern its shape.  
Dan reached into his pocket and fished out his phone from the accumulative garbage he’d stored up in there. He slowly brought it up to his line of sight, anticipating that it would fall through his shaky fingers. Luckily, Arin’s number was first on his recent calls list.  
“Dan, go to sleep.” His first words were even and pronounced despite his grogginess, as if he’d been rehearsing it.  
“I will, I swear but- dude, you have to come over and see this.” Dan’s pitch jumped up with every word, until his own voice rattled his throat.  
“See what?  
“Just- _please_. Please, I am not even kidding you, you can’t miss this. _Please_.”  
Arin groaned dreadfully. “Can’t I see it in the morning, Dan?”  
“No! No. No, _no_ -“  
“ _Dan_.”  
“Please come over, I’m scared and if you miss this I will be _so_ angry.” His words strung together in a long line of rushed syllables.  
There was a few seconds of static.  
“…Fine. If it’s that important to you. I’ll be over in a bit.”  
Dan smiled from ear to ear. “I love you.”  
“Shut the fuck up.” Arin’s grin could be heard in his tone. He hung up.  
The TV screen started to flicker on and off, faster than Dan could register. His world was still submerged in blue. A drum beat travelled down from the TV and shook the carpets. Soon after, a deep, gritty guitar riff rattled Dan’s chest in the best kind of way. Then the keytar kicked in and every instrument dropped into a heavy harmony, following a beat that bounced off the walls and made Dan’s head spin.  
He glanced over at the TV. The screen flashed red, blue and green in time with the beat of the song. He pursed his lips and shrugged. His head gently swayed back and forth.  
After about half a minute, the song grew quiet and faded into background noise. Danny’s eyes fixed on the TV, following the slowly changing colours. His heart lay like a brick in his chest.  
“…Hello?” he murmured, not entirely sure if he’d said it out loud or just in his head.  
If it weren’t for the quiet tune playing in the background, the uneasy silence would have swallowed Danny whole.  
“He-llo.”  
Danny seized up. His breaths were short and strained, if they came at all. His fingernails dug through the skin on his legs. His eyes opened up until they started watering.  
“Do n-ot…not…be a-larmed.” The voice was electronic, but not robotic- as if someone was autotuning their voice in real time. “We have no…mali-malicious in-tention.”  
Danny’s eyes darted around the room. Whatever had been at the window was gone now, but that wasn’t to say it had gone. Otherwise…did TVs have webcams?  
“Who is we?” Danny asked. His voice trembled no matter how hard he tried to keep it even.  
There was a short pause.  
“’We’ is the first-person, plural personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English.” The voice took on a more monotone, synthetic drawl.  
“That’s not what I- was that Siri?” A hint of a chuckle found its way into Danny’s voice.  
“Who is Siri?”  
Dan sighed, letting his head droop. “Nothing. I meant, who are you?”  
The TV let out a multi-toned bleep that shot into Danny’s left ear and came out the right.  
“My name is Doctor Sung.” The voice came back much clearer, devoid of the broken syllables and unstable pitch. “I am somewhat of a liason. What is your name?”  
“Uh…” Dan lightly scratched the side of his face. “I’m…Daniel, I guess. No title or…anything.” Dan’s stomach contracted as if a strong gust of wind had blown through it. He wrapped his arms around his ribcage and gazed around the room. “What do you…? Where are you…?” Every question he had piled on top of each other, fighting for dominance. “Why are you _here_?” He glanced back at the TV.  
“A good question. You see, we are currently on a tour of the universe spreading the joys of funk. We plan to spend the next few decades or so on Earth, but before we can settle we must collect information on the status of funk which currently exists on Earth. We set our ship to direct us towards large pockets of funk and, well…it brought us to this very location.”  
An entire novel’s worth of words swirled around in Dan’s head. A tour of the universe was printed in big, black letters at the very front. Adrenaline shot through his veins until it pinned him to the spot. “…Funk? Like, music?”  
“Precisely.”  
“I play music for a living. I don’t know if that’s what you mean.” He sounded like an automated voice on a helpline.  
There was a quiet but urgent gasp on the other side of the communication. “I _knew_ we were in the right place.”  
Danny let out a sheepish chuckle. “Wait…your ship knows about our band?”  
“Probably. She’s very intelligent, you know.” Sung spoke so fast that the autotune effect couldn’t catch up. “That’s just…brilliant.”  
Muffled sounds of business- quiet humming and fumbling- came through the receiver. Danny looked down at the TV with squinted eyes.  
“Excellent. Daniel…do you plan to exist for the foreseeable future?”  
“To…what?”  
“Is this your permanent location? Do you regularly inhabit this plane of existence and will you be located here for the next short stretch of time?”  
“I…suppose?” His pitch shot up. “I’ll still be here, yeah.”  
“Brilliant. Well, we must disengage. It has been a pleasure talking to you, Daniel.”  
“Wait, hang on, I-“  
The screen faded to black. The room fell into a static silence again.  
Danny crashed onto his knees on the carpet. He shuffled forward, barely registering the carpet burns, and stared at the dead screen. His mouth slide open as his gaze lost focus. All of the irrelevant and exhausting thoughts from before returned, only this time they filled his head to the brim. Among them: what even _was_ that? Part of his brain wanted to discard it as unreal, somehow. A dream, a hallucination- it’d been a while since he’d taken shrooms, but he knew all the signs. Dreams were another matter entirely. Why was it that knowing you were in a dream was exhilarating, but the possibility that he wasn’t awake made Danny feel like his stomach was rotting? His thoughts melded together into fuzzy, bloating static in his head.  
And then there was a knock. A crisp, solid sound that managed to nudge Danny out of his mental hell. It was just enough for him to get himself up on his feet and half-stumble to the door.  
As he opened it, a wall of cold air hit him and blew away some of the brain fog. Arin stood on the threshold in his pyjamas. He squinted at Dan.  
“Alright, what is it?” he murmured, walking into the house.  
Dan’s eyes shot open. “You…you missed it.”  
“I missed _what_?”  
Dan pulled the door shut and practically jumped the distance between them. “Oh my god, it was- there was- it was-“ He frantically pointed to the open living room door, which was the first door on the left.  
“What, in the living room?”  
Danny nodded. Arin started towards the door and he followed.  
“You’re gonna have to help me here,” Arin said as he walked into the room. “What am I looking at here?”  
“There was…something. But it’s gone now.”  
Arin sighed and spun on his heels to face Dan. He gently put his hands on his shoulders. “Dude, you need to get to bed. You know you’re going to hate yourself in the morning.”  
Dan glanced to the side of Arin. “Yeah, you’re right…” He chuckled, mostly at himself. “Man, I do this to myself. That’s the weirdest part.”  
Arin nodded. “Come on. I’m not leaving here until you’re asleep.” He carefully turned Dan’s body towards the living room door.  
Dan let out another gentle chuckle.  
“Thanks, man. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”


	2. Chapter 2

The morning rolled in like a gradually dispersing sheet of fog. When Danny’s eyes opened, they were heavy and crusty with sleep. He lay in bed for a little while, willing himself to overcome the very nearly overwhelming pangs of sleepiness that were buzzing through his brain. Eventually, though, his body started to rise. He flicked his gaze over to his right; a jolt of adrenaline shot through him, knocking those waves of lethargy right out of his skull.  
He slapped his hand onto his chest. “Jesus Christ, man, you scared the life out of me,” he said, his words punctuated with heavy breaths.  
“What?” came the sleepy mumble from the cocoon of blankets and pillows on Danny’s floor. From the makeshift bed arose a head of messy dark hair. Arin squinted at him as if he were looking directly at the sun. “What time is it?”  
Danny shrugged, shooting a quick glance over to the alarm clock on his bedside table. It was basically just a clock now, since he hadn’t been able to sleep past 8am in years. “7:41am.”  
Arin groaned and dove back underneath the covers.  
Danny chuckled quietly to himself. He leaned to the side and dangled his head off the edge of the bed, almost directly above the big lump in the covers. “Why didn’t you go home last night?”  
An arm came out from underneath the sheets to wave off that idea. It was accompanied by an incoherent grumble.  
“What?” Dan’s grin found its way into his tone.  
Arin’s bedhead re-surfaced once again. “Effort. I was practically passing out by the time you went to bed.”  
Danny sat back up on his bed. His gaze drifted forward and darted from left to right. “Ah, yeah…sorry about that, man.”  
Arin gave him a sloppy, sleepy smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled. “It’s what friends are for.”  
The notion made Dan laugh and heated his cheeks up at the same time. He spun around and carefully placed his feet on the floor next to the cacophony of sheets. “We should probably get going, dude.”  
Arin groaned, but sat up anyways. He dusted the crusty bits of sleep from his eyes and fluttered his eyelids until he adjusted to the searing light coming in from the window next to Dan’s bed. By this time, Dan had already started down the upstairs hallway towards the stairs.  
Ten minutes later, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filtered through the living room. Dan stood by the kettle on the corner counter in the kitchen, still in nothing but his baggy boxers. “How many sugars do you want?” he called through to Arin, who was sitting on the rugged grey leather sofa.  
Arin lazily gazed through the open kitchen door to the left of the couch. His face screwed up. “ _How many sugars do you want, Arin_?” he mimicked in a whiny voice. “Jesus, dude, how many times have you made me coffee?”  
Danny rolled his eyes, smiling faintly. “Excuse _me_ for not wanting to assume.” He added three sugars to Arin’s and two to his own, then stirred them both. After that, he hooked his index fingers around either handle and carefully tiptoed through to the living room.  
His living room had all the hallmarks of a broke college student; it contained only the sofa and the TV in terms of furniture. The rest of the room was open, empty white carpet that had been christened with spilled drinks, dirt from outside and dropped food so many times that there were more dark cream patches than white bits. And for all intents and purposes, he had never quite gotten out of that stage of his life.  
“Your coffee, Sir,” he said in a botched French accent as he handed Arin his coffee and sat beside him on the sofa.  
Arin chuckled. “Thanks.” He set it down by his feet, waiting for it to cool.  
Dan took a sip of his coffee. The heat trickled down his throat and seemed to creep into his head, slowly melting away the pockets of grog still left over from a bad night’s sleep. “I still can’t believe you slept on the floor because of me, dude.”  
Arin shrugged, giving him a coy grin. “I don’t know, man. I’ve slept in worse places.”  
“Where did you even get the pillows and shit from?”  
With his free hand, Arin gestured towards the downstairs hallway through the open living room door. “Uh, from that little cubby hole underneath the stairs.”  
“Oh yeah!” Dan looked through the door. “I completely forgot about that.”  
Arin waved his coffee cup around. “Seriously? It’s like one massive pillow fort, I could live in there.”  
Dan rested his cheek on his free hand. “Oh, fuck, yeah. I remember once, a couple of years ago, I came home from a party and just passed out in there. It was _super_ comfy.”  
Arin let out a high-pitched, shocked giggle. “Jesus. You know your night was fucked when you wake up in a closet.”  
Dan laughed and nodded. “Yeah.” His eyes slowly drifted over to the TV, sitting dormant in the corner of the room. Gradually, his smile faded. “I’ve had some fuckin’ weird nights…”

 

***

  
By the time Arin and Dan pulled up to the Grump Space, the sun was just starting to rise up from beneath the clouds. It painted the sky in dull grey-blue, the sign of night slowly giving way to the morning. Dan nudged the car door open and stepped out into a wall of chilly air. He pulled his long brown winter coat over his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist.  
Arin went in first, leaving the door swinging just an inch before Danny’s face by the time he got to it. They walked into the middle of what seemed to be a rock-paper-scissors tournament.  
“That’s not fair, you changed yours!” Ross shook his scissor fingers at Brian.  
Brian flattened out his rock hand and let it fall by his waist. “I just took literally a microsecond longer to decide, how is that cheating?” His tone was solid and stressed, but his gradually curling lips said something completely different.  
Danny locked eyes with Suzy, who was standing behind the boys in full view of the match. Barry was beside her, seemingly engrossed in the argument. She just smiled pleasantly and shrugged.  
“I get the sense that you guys need a referee.” Arin stretched his arms out and strode into the playing field.  
Brian and Ross shot a simultaneous glance over at Arin. “Oh, hey there,” Brian said with a smile. His tone was devoid of any ounce of irritation. “We’re just having a friendly democratic debate about who has to clean up the milk.”  
“The- what? What did you guys do?”  
“Spilled the milk, evidently,” Suzy chimed in.  
“Brian spilled the milk.”  
“You were holding the bowl!” Brian waved his arms around for emphasis.  
“You can’t jump out at people when they’re holding cereal, you know something bad’s going to happen.” Ross glowered over at Brian.  
Danny pressed his hands to his temple. He drifted towards the kitchen, still facing the other Grumps. “Am I going to find the entire kitchen covered in milk and cornflakes?”  
“’Covered’ is an overstatement…” Brian grumbled to himself.  
Danny took a deep breath, letting his hands fall by his waist. He counted to three in his head and spun around.  
The floor was coated in white, a shallow sea of milk that ever so slowly edged towards the main space. Debris made up of orange-brown flakes and little bits of broken bowl floated around in it. “Jesus Christ Brian…”  
“Right?” Ross craned his neck to look at Danny. He shot out an arm towards Brian. “You can’t leave this guy alone for a few seconds.  
Danny’s head fell into his hands. A deep, frustrated groan came out through the spaces between his fingertips. He raised his head again and strode towards the main space, leaving faint milky footprints. “Suzy, Barry. Could you help Ross clean up, please?”  
Suzy and Barry both gave affirming nods. “Alright,” Barry said.  
“Wait, what? Why?” Ross’ voice was so fraught with outrage that it became more of a shriek.  
“Because we need Brian for Grumpcade,” Danny explained. He walked towards Brian, hooked his arm around his elbow, and dragged him off towards the recording room. Arin joined them.  
As they went, Danny heard the slump sound of a tongue being stuck out. He rolled his eyes.  
Splatoon was one of those games that became automatic after a while. Shoot ink, swim in it, win the battle. That didn’t stop Arin from thrashing them every time, though. Brian was more focused on making ink-related innuendos than actually playing the game. Danny, on the other hand, had better things to think about.  
About fifteen minutes into the session, Arin paused the game. “Hang on a minute.” He hopped up from the couch and let out a long, deep groan of relief as he stretched. “Gotta go pee.” He ambled over to the recording room door, opened it, and shot off to the bathroom.  
There was a solid minute of silence. “Brian?” Dan’s voice was tiny and shaky.  
“Yeah?” Brian’s head jerked towards Danny, as if he had just been ejected from his own little world  
“You’re good with technology, right?”  
Brian gave him a sly smirk. “Yeah. I’m very fond of, uh- a little thing called the spoon?” He looked at Danny like a patronising schoolteacher. “Very cutting edge stuff.”  
Danny rolled his eyes away from Brian. “You know what I mean.”  
Brian folded his arms and scooted a little closer to Danny. “I don’t, actually,” he said with a chuckle in his tone. “What do you mean? Computers? Smartphones? Lift shafts?”  
Dan’s gaze drifted downwards, and then snapped back up to meet Brian’s. “Do you know anything about TVs?”  
Brian shrugged. “I mean, there’s not a lot to know about TVs.” He looked dismissively to the side. “What’s your problem?”  
Dan took a deep breath. “Would it be possible for someone to hack a TV?”  
Brian looked up, as if searching for the answer above Danny’s head. “Uh, it depends. If it’s one of those new-fangled SmartTVs with all the apps and stuff, it’s about as easy to hack into one of those apps as it is to hack into it on your phone or laptop.”  
Dan glanced to the side as he ran over what Brian had just said, picking apart and deciphering what it meant for him. “Okay, so what would the hacker be able to do if they did hack into those apps?”  
“Pretty much just the same as normal. Access accounts, bank details if you have those associated with the app. Change passwords, use your account for their own purposes.” He screwed up his face in a remarkably paternal manner. “All the usual, nasty stuff.”  
“So they couldn’t, like…” Dan faced forward and let out a deep breath. “They couldn’t like…transmit something to your TV? Like, play a video or just make something show up on your screen?”  
The next few seconds seemed to last indefinitely as Dan searched for any sign of a reaction on Brian’s face. Any muscle movement, any change of expression. When Brian’s eyes finally narrowed and went solid, Dan felt adrenaline’s shakier cousin shooting through his veins.  
“No.”  
The word slammed into Danny’s chest like a copper bar.  
“To do that, they’d have to hotwire the actual broadcasting center that was transmitting to you. They’d basically have to hack the actual channel, not just your TV. …Why are you asking?” He cocked his head, looking Dan up and down.  
Dan shuffled restlessly in his seat. “Oh, nothing big really…something I’m working on writing.”  
Brian shot him a coy grin. “Oh, really? I didn’t know you were a writer.”  
Dan’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Uh, it’s just…something for my friend, y’know. Nothing big.” He shrugged.  
Brian tilted forward, either surveying Danny or trying to catch his gaze- if not both at the same time. Danny glanced over at Brian and smiled tepidly.  
The recording room doors burst open and rattled on their hinges.  
“Who’s ready to fuckin’ splat?” Arin threw his arms out to the side.  
Dan fell into a laughing fit, throwing his head back against the couch cushions. Half of it was composed of the air that had been trapped in his chest for the past five minutes.  
Arin swayed over to the couch and plopped himself down between Brian and Danny. He grabbed the controller and unpaused the game. “Now, where the fuck were we?”

 

***

  
Arin swaggered out of the recording space ahead of Danny and Brian. “Supreme reigning champion, as per usual.” His voice bounced off the walls.  
Brian trailed behind him, with crossed arms and a stifled grin. “You won at _Splatoon_ , dude.”  
Dan gently grabbed him by the forearm. “Just…let him have his moment,” he said, softly and sweetly.  
The atmosphere in the Grump Space had changed drastically from when they’d first arrived. The place was almost silent and seemingly empty- until you glanced over at the kitchen.  
The sea of white had been purged from the linoleum floor and there was a small landfill of broken bowl debris up on the counter. Ross, Suzy, and Barry milled about the place, picking up little loose flakes from the ground.  
“Having fun over there?” Brian grinned smugly.  
Dan nudged him. “Don’t provoke him.”  
Brian glanced over at him and shrugged. “Why? It’s fun.”  
Danny rolled his eyes and took a hold of Brian’s forearm again, this time much firmer. “Come on, dude.”  
Brian put up a little resistance as Dan started tugging at his arm, but that was mostly for show. He soon gave way and let Dan guide him towards the Grump Space doors.  
Arin stayed where he was standing. “Ah, actually I’ve got to finish some stuff here.” He scratched the side of his head. “Brian, can you give Danny a lift home?”  
Brian shrugged. “I don’t see why not, since he seems to have already adopted me.” He glanced at Danny’s hand around his forearm, and then gave him one of his signature death glares. Dan pulled his hand away from his arm and threw his arms up in mock surrender.  
He craned his neck to look at Arin, behind him. “If I’m dead by tomorrow, it’s on you.”  
Arin grinned and nodded. Dan felt a sweaty palm, still warm from holding a controller for almost half an hour, wrapping around his wrist.  
“ _Come on, dude_.” Danny sighed and met Brian’s stride as they walked towards the doors.  
Danny hit another wall of cold air as soon as he stepped outside. Brian’s grip slowly loosened, falling away by the time they reached his car. Danny hopped into the passenger’s seat. Whilst Brian started up the car, Danny nestled his elbow on the window controls bar and lightly pressed his forehead to the glass.  
A slow song that still somehow managed to burst with attitude came on the CD player when the car started up. Dan’s eyes ran over the busy streets and cautious figures dressed to their necks in wool as they passed by him. His forehead ratted against the window, frazzling his brain at first but quickly fading into the background- along with everything else. The streets blended into a dark grey blur, decorated with spots of yellow and peach.  
At some point, Brian turned the radio down. “What’s wrong?”  
Danny’s body jerked, the words crashing into his bloated head like a comet. His gaze came into focus again, now skimming over the patches of grass at the side of a highway. “W-what? Nothing’s wrong. Why would something be wrong?” He feigned a smile.  
“You’re quiet,” Brian said in his own special monotone.  
“I’m always quiet in the car.”  
“Yeah, but you’re staring wistfully out the window instead of smiling at your crotch.” From where he was sitting, Danny could only see one upturned corner of Brian’s mouth. “What’s wrong?”  
Danny sighed and gazed out of the car windscreen. Digital billboards screamed at them like a nagging parent to put their seatbelt on and obey the speed limit and pull over for cops. A few breaths passed as he mustered the courage to force sound out his mouth. “…Has anything ever happened to you that, like, you can’t logically explain?”  
Brian turned to Danny, carrying the expression of an overzealous talk show host. “Of course not, Dan. I’m a man of science.” He winked.  
Dan glared at him. His face fell flat and his eyes lost all traces of smugness.  
“Sorry.” He faced the road again. “But, yes. I think everyone’s had that happen to them at some point in their life, especially scientists.”  
“What do you do about it?” Danny’s voice was meek and small, like a child on a class trip, stuttering out a question for the museum tour guide.  
“…Well, to be honest, the universe is so much bigger and more complex than we could ever understand. At least not without a shitton of fancy math. So…all you really can do is keep an open mind, and look for evidence.”  
Dan looked to the ground, his shoulders slumping. “Right. Look for evidence.”  
Brian glanced over at Dan. In the few seconds before he turned back to the road, Dan caught a glint of worry in his eyes. “You know, if it’s anything to do with the physical sciences, you can always come to me. Even if I can’t help you, I’m sure one of my ex-colleagues would love a chance to nerd out at you.”  
Dan let out a short, sheepish laugh. “Thanks for that. I really appreciate it.” His eyes found their way up again, to the highway and the billboards that zoomed past them. For a moment, he could’ve sworn that one flickered and changed as they passed by it, but by then it was gone.  
He smiled faintly to himself and shook his head.  
 _Well, this is new._  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you have any prompts/feedback/questions/want to scream into the void with me for 4 hours straight, feel free to hit me up at [my tumblr](http://magic-and-hijinks.tumblr.com/)


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